Racialised professionals’ experiences of selective incivility in organisations: A multi-level analysis of subtle racism

Introduction

Owing to the global rise of right-wing extremist ideologies, diversity is now at a critical juncture (Nkomo et al., 2019). The promise of equality has been largely unfulfilled for marginalised employees in organisations, and for some of them inequalities may be intensifying. In particular, despite decades of equality legislation, workplace racism remains a particularly persistent problem (Dickens, 2007; Quillian et al., 2017; Seifert and Wang, 2018; Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey, 2012). Racialised workers routinely experience bullying and harassment; denial of opportunities in recruitment and selection, training and development, network access and promotion processes; and receive lower performance ratings, pay and other rewards (e.g. Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004; Fox and Stallworth, 2005; Greenhaus et al., 1990; Guest, 2017; James, 2000; Pedulla and Pager, 2019). Racism is endemic in organisations, and disadvantages all aspects of racialised employees’ work lives severely, as evidenced by myriad reports (McGregor-Smith, 2017; Nwabuzo, 2017; Solomon et al., 2019).

While racism exacts significant harm on its targets, it is also deeply corrosive to organisations. Research shows that increased racial diversity is associated with better organisational outcomes, ranging from greater market share to larger profits (Herring, 2009; Smulowitz et al., 2019). Firm-level racial diversity can serve as a strategic human resource that facilitates sustainable competitive advantage (Richard, 2000). The benefits of racial inclusion tend to be even more noticeable in top management echelons, as racially diverse management teams buttress corporate reputation, business innovation and performance (Andrevski et al., 2014; Miller and Triana, 2009). By contrast, negative diversity climate perceptions surrounding race are associated with absenteeism, reduced commitment and increased turnover intentions for minority workers (Avery et al., 2007; McKay et al., 2007; Triana et al., 2015), which can indirectly depress organisational performance. Yet, ironically, racism continues unimpeded at all levels and across all job types, causing problems for both racialised workers and the organisations in which they operate.

Race and organisation scholarship has long tended to bifurcate racism into two main categories of practice: blatant racism – explicit processes of race-based discrimination, and subtle racism – implicit processes of race-based discrimination (Pettigrew and Meertens, 1995). Conventionally, policy has focused on the relatively more overt forms of racism and its effects on racialised employees in different career stages and employment contexts. Yet, research has shown that subtle forms of racism are ubiquitous, and its impact ranges from career-damaging foreclosure of opportunities to significant dangers to employee well-being (Deitch et al., 2003; Van Laer and Janssens, 2011). When expressed through subtle means discrimination is hard to pin down, precisely because its gradual unfolding appears insignificant, but the chronic nature of low-level hits nonetheless can trouble targets considerably (Cortina, 2008; Cortina et al., 2013). Further, in cases of subtle discrimination, there is usually only a vague connection between perpetrators’ unwelcome attitudes, behaviours and cues and a targeted employee’s identity (Dipboye and Halverson, 2004; Offermann et al., 2014). The ambiguity inherent to subtly expressed prejudice can lead targeted employees to misrecognise discrimination as an outcome of personal shortcomings on their own part, which can cause significant distress, undermining confidence as well as performance (Salvatore and Shelton, 2007). Additionally, when discrimination occurs subtly, employees can find it difficult to seek remedies through organisational grievance procedures because of the elusive nature of the mistreatment. The lack of clear and obvious remedies can further deepen employees’ sense of disempowerment, exacerbating the damage to careers and well-being (Jones et al., 2016). In this light, developing new paradigms of discrimination is vital as the workings of racism change to take on ever-subtler forms in organisations (Ogbonna and Harris, 2006).

This article explores the workplace selective incivility experiences of racialised professionals (the term adopted by this article to underline the social constructedness of race). As a theoretical lens, selective incivility incorporates individual, organisation and society-level effects, and is thus a powerful multi-level framework that can delineate how racism can operate through subtle means as a layered reality (Cortina, 2008). In this sense, selective incivility is significantly more useful than alternative theories, such as Sue’s (2010) micro-aggressions model, which is neither explicitly multi-level nor exclusively focused on subtle discrimination. Additionally, utilising selective incivility as a theoretical lens contributes to the diversity literature by offering a more integrative analysis of race discrimination. By taking a holistic approach, we address the oversimplifications common to the prevailing scholarly preference for single-level accounts of workplace racism (e.g. characterising discrimination as a problem of individual deviance or structural inequality only). Our study addresses three inter-related questions: How do racialised professionals experience selective incivility as shaped by: (a) individual-level phenomena (i.e. interactions with co-workers, superiors and customers/clients); (b) organisation-level processes (i.e. management and HR policies and practices); (c) society-level realities (i.e. social norms and ideology)? To answer these questions, the article undertakes qualitative research based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews. This methodological choice reflects a conscious effort to privilege the voices and perspectives of racialised professionals, as the elusive nature of subtle racism is most intelligible to the people who personally experience it in organisations.

Subtle racism in the workplace

The literature on subtle racism is comprised of explanations ranging from a focus on individual misbehaviours all the way to structural inequalities (Van Laer and Janssens, 2011). In general individual-level explanations attempt to understand the psychosocial processes that generate discrimination on the basis of race, and how to remedy them in order to ensure fairer interactions in social settings (e.g. Dovidio and Gaertner, 2000; Gaertner and Dovidio, 1986; McConahay, 1986; Sears, 1988; Sears and Henry, 2003). In this perspective, exploring the cognitive mechanisms behind discrimination is the primary mode of understanding and addressing racial bias in organisations and society. At the structural end of the spectrum, scholarly attention shifts to society-level phenomena that configure an unequal system of race relations conditioned by the dominance of specific group(s) over others, and inform discriminatory policies and practices (Bonilla-Silva, 2006; Essed, 1991; Feagin, 2006). Each level of analysis offers explanations for subtle racism that come with a variety of strengths and weaknesses, ultimately underlining the inadequacy of limiting the analysis to any specific level.

Individual-level research focuses on psychological forces that shape attitudes and behaviours that express subtle racism. For this group of arguments intentionality behind perpetrators’ actions can be equivocal or clear, and the targets may experience some ambiguity in attributing the causes of the abuse. Key conceptualisations of subtle racism, where perpetrators have relatively unambiguous intentionality, are symbolic racism (Sears, 1988; Sears and Henry, 2003) and modern racism (McConahay, 1986). Symbolic and modern racists stand on the conservative end of the political spectrum, with strong beliefs in competition and individualism, and rejection of redistributive efforts, either organisationally or in society more generally. Not surprisingly, symbolic racism tends to be associated with a lack of support for positive discrimination or positive action measures designed to ensure greater parity in organisations (e.g. Franchi, 2003). At the point of hiring, modern racists, supported by apparent business justifications from authority figures in organisations, can cause significant distortions favouring white employees (Brief et al., 2000). Additionally, symbolic and modern racists can exact harm upon minorities through greater workplace bullying (Fox and Stallworth, 2005). While subscribing to the legitimacy of indirectly discriminatory policies, symbolic and modern racists consider themselves non-racists because of the subtlety of their biases.

Another individual-level explanation for subtle racism is aversive racism, where perpetrators have no conscious intention to engage in biased behaviour. In contrast to individuals who express symbolic or modern racism, individuals with aversive racism strongly believe in the liberal values of tolerance, fairness and equality, while still carrying unconscious biases that lead them to discriminate (Gaertner and Dovidio, 1986). Aversive racism occurs in multi-factor situations, where numerous reasons may account for the discriminatory behaviour, which helps perpetrators to justify biases by referencing other seemingly valid considerations. In this way, no clear discrepancy exists between the discriminators’ positive self-image and negative actions, creating conducive ground for persistent bias (Gaertner and Dovidio, 1986). As Dovidio and Gaertner (2000) demonstrate in a US-based study, despite longitudinal declines in self-reported prejudice, participants have still made selection decisions that disfavoured black candidates in candidate pools populated by roughly equally qualified people. While aversive racism research mainly originates from the USA, its salience does not necessarily inhere in the North American context. For example, Hodson et al. (2005) show through UK experimental data that aversive racism remains intractable in legal settings, even when jurors have the benefit of procedural innovations that clarify how to carry out less biased evaluations. As aversive racism has garnered growing attention in recent years, organisations have started to focus on unconscious bias as a central diversity issue. Employees are now widely offered unconscious bias training, although research argues such individualised interventions are largely ineffectual (Noon, 2018). One of the fundamental problems with individual-level analyses of subtle racism is that they offer fragmented and de-contextualised solutions. This individualistic approach unduly reduces subtle racism to a problem with specific employees or their abstract social-psychological categorisation processes that come from a place of innocence unmarked by harm ideation. Whether symbolic, modern or aversive in nature, the individualistic theorising of subtle racism pays insufficient attention to the organisational, institutional and systemic forces that constantly reproduce racial conflict between groups. Thus, such explanations fail to capture the domination of racialised employees through an unequal distribution of power, resources and rewards (e.g. Essed, 1991).

Through micro-aggressions research, Sue (2010) attempts to account for racism by focusing on individuals’ psychologies more expansively. Encompassing a spectrum from the blatant to the subtle end, his account of low-level slights ostensibly focuses on interpersonal encounters between perpetrators and targets of discrimination. Yet, he also signals that racialised minorities experience micro-aggressions against a noxious social backdrop of inequality (Sue, 2010). Micro-aggressions exert an oppressive material effect on targets, because they indirectly limit opportunities for ethnic minorities in terms of recruitment, selection, retention and promotion, which reinforces dominant groups’ privileges (Sue, 2010). Additionally, the incessant and ambiguous nature of the attacks on the targets exhausts cognitive resources and degrades their work performance (DeCuir-Gunby and Gunby, 2016; Holder et al., 2015; Kim et al., 2019), intensifying material inequalities. Further, racial micro-aggressions lead ethnic minorities to experience weaker belonging in organisations (Lewis et al., 2019). Yet, although the micro-aggressions scholarship considers subtle racism as an issue that encompasses more than interpersonal effects, organisational and societal complexities remain a relatively more implicit part of the theorising. Moreover, utilising micro-aggressions could unduly complicate research focused solely on subtle racism, because it is a spectrum theory of blatant and subtle racisms expressed in micro-measures. Yet, Sue’s (2010) ideas are instructive in this study because of his significant emphasis on racialised individuals’ voices, and lived experiences, as the most appropriate data source in studying subtle racism.

Located at the structural end of the literature, everyday racism is another prominent explanation of subtle racism. Everyday racism is a concatenation of practices unique to a racialised social system that hinges on the marginalisation of racialised groups. Here, normalisation of structural inequality entails a mix of denial of racism and subtly exclusionary moves perpetrated by the dominant group. Everyday racism works insidiously, slowly undercutting racialised minorities’ job satisfaction and well-being (Deitch et al., 2003). Research shows that everyday racism becomes progressively more acute as employees go up the career ladder, and can take a wide range of harmful forms, such as negative stereotyping and problematisation of cultural differences (Van Laer and Janssens, 2011). While everyday racism nicely shows that subtle racism encompasses structural relations that reproduce workplace inequalities, it can unduly elide the active role of individuals in perpetuating interpersonal discrimination. Subtle racism has doubtless a significant structural dimension, but targets often experience subtle racism as propagated by specific perpetrators. The theoretical emphasis on structure alone risks distancing research from targets’ personal experiences of discrimination.

Taken together, the literature on subtle racism reveals clear evidence that majorities hold explicit or implicit biases against racialised minorities, which disadvantages stigmatised populations materially and symbolically in a plethora of social arenas including the workplace. Yet, neither individual-based explanations, nor structure-led accounts, delineate the multi-level dimensionality of racialised individuals’ lived experiences in the workplace. The existing literature neglects holistic accounts that outline the layered complexity of how subtle racism works, and thus fails to account for why it persists. There is a pressing need for more nuanced understandings of subtle racism within the coordinates of a theoretical framework that can accommodate explorations that straddle across multiple levels of analysis. Turning to the multi-level concept of selective incivility is therefore a promising avenue for understanding subtle racism in all its complexity.

Selective incivility as a multi-level framework of subtle racism

Cortina (2008) developed the concept of selective incivility by combining insights from multiple literatures. In part, selective incivility draws from the general workplace incivility literature (Andersson and Pearson, 1999; Cortina et al., 2001; Pearson et al., 2001), which theorises antisocial work behaviours that appear with low intensity and ambiguous intentionality. Additionally, selective incivility contains ideas from subtle sexism (e.g. Jackson et al., 2001; Swim et al., 2004; Tougas et al., 1995) and subtle racism, such as symbolic racism (Sears, 1988; Sears and Henry, 2003), modern racism (McConahay, 1986) and aversive racism (Dovidio and Gaertner, 2000; Gaertner and Dovidio, 1986). According to Cortina (2008), with the ascendancy of social norms that decry blatantly discriminatory attitudes and behaviours, contemporary discrimination emerges through a subtle channel of expression, selective incivility, where perpetrators selectively target minorities for workplace incivility.

To assemble her notion of selective incivility, Cortina (2008) subscribes to Andersson and Pearson’s (1999: 457) broad definition of workplace incivility as denoting ‘low intensity deviant behavior with ambiguous intent to harm the target, in violation of workplace norms for mutual respect. Uncivil behaviors are characteristically rude and discourteous, displaying a lack of regard for others.’ According to Cortina, while organisations view general workplace incivility negatively, it does not attract the same penalties that discriminatory behaviours like blatant racism would. Blatant racism is illegal in most country contexts, and many organisations have adopted non-discrimination policies that refute blatantly racist behaviours as unequivocally wrong under a zero-tolerance agenda. Therefore, individuals who may have racial biases have strong incentives to cover their true intent by resorting to selectively propagated uncivil actions, disguised as general incivility, against minorities (Cortina, 2008). Equally, individuals who hold implicit biases may selectively expose minorities to incivility, while believing themselves to hold egalitarian values and construing their actions as non-racist (Cortina, 2008). Finally, even persons who may not have explicit or implicit biases can potentially engage in selective incivility, if they model their behaviours after group-level norms in organisations with poor diversity climates, where minorities are marginalised (Cortina, 2008). While perpetrator intentionality exists on a continuum, the consequences for targets can be equally deleterious.

Cortina’s (2008) multi-level theorising involves three levels of analysis: individual, organisation and society. At the individual level, selective incivility hinges on affective factors, such as aversion against outgroup members, differences in esteem as well as cognitive factors such as social categorisation and stereotyping (e.g. Dovidio et al., 2001; Jones, 2002). At the organisational level, the practical force of organisational non-discrimination policies, extent of leadership support, and the nature of intra-organisational socio-cultural norms regarding diversity may shape selective incivility (e.g. Dipboye and Halverson, 2004). Finally, at the society level, Cortina (2008) propounds that a tradition of discrimination, differences in social roles and inter-group asymmetries in power can inform selective incivility (e.g. Operario and Fiske, 1998). In cases of selective incivility, the interplay between perpetrators and targets is an outcome of the interaction effects between racial prejudice at the individual level and the organisational climate surrounding subtle racism. Further, society-level race ideology and norms inform individual and organisation-level practices. In sum, Cortina (2008) theorises selective incivility as a multi-level concept that eschews wholly individual-level or structural explanations, because subtle racism resides in the imbrications of multiple levels of analysis and their interaction effects.

More recently, Cortina et al. (2013) extended the scope of selective incivility by accounting for race and gender intersectionally, demonstrating that racialised women experience selective incivility more sharply and damagingly. Originally developed by black feminists in the USA, intersectionality is an analytical tool that traces the dynamic effects of systems of oppression that pertain to the multiple identities simultaneously held by people (Crenshaw, 1990; Davis, 2008; Hill Collins and Bilge, 2016). Historically, the intersectionality scholarship focused on gender, race and class mainly (Yuval-Davis, 2006), but the concept is sufficiently tractable to account for a far wider array of social positionalities (Healy et al., 2019). In this research, eschewing an exclusive focus on surface-level diversity (Harrison et al., 1998), we consider intersectional dimensions of selective incivility expansively. Additionally, we consider intersectionality as a multi-level construct, going beyond dominant characterisations of intersectionality as double jeopardy (i.e. additive view of (dis-)advantages at the individual level).

Methodology

Interviews with 22 ethnic minority professionals comprised the data for this study. The age range of the participants was 29 to 54. There were 12 male and 10 female participants. Five participants were Black Caribbean, four were Black African and one was mixed race (Black Caribbean and White). Eight participants had a South Asian background, and four participants had a Middle Eastern ethnic origin. The participants worked in a cross-section of industries, including communications, consulting, finance, engineering, healthcare, IT, law, local government, logistics, marketing, retail and tourism. Table 1 summarises the participants’ key characteristics.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Interviewee background characteristics.

Participants	Ethnicity	Gender	Age	Industry
1	Middle Eastern	M	41	Retail
2	Black Caribbean	M	37	Finance
3	Black African	M	36	Consulting
4	Black African	F	34	Tourism
5	Black Caribbean and White	M	31	Tourism
6	South Asian	F	37	Marketing
7	Black Caribbean	M	33	Finance
8	Black Caribbean	F	32	Law
9	Black African	M	36	Logistics
10	Black Caribbean	F	46	Logistics
11	Black Caribbean	M	36	Finance
12	Black African	F	42	Consulting
13	South Asian	F	35	IT
14	South Asian	M	31	Finance
15	Middle Eastern	M	29	Tourism
16	South Asian	F	46	Local government
17	South Asian	F	39	Healthcare
18	South Asian	M	44	Engineering
19	Middle Eastern	M	41	Finance
20	South Asian	F	37	Law
21	South Asian	F	54	Communications
22	Middle Eastern	M	39	IT

Interviews lasted 45 minutes to 75 minutes, and were conducted by one of the authors in locations chosen by the participants. The interviews were digitally recorded and fully transcribed. The participants received assurances of anonymity and confidentiality, and they were clear that they could withdraw from the study at any time during or after the interviews, if they wished to do so. At all stages of the research process, from data collection to data analysis, we prioritised reflexivity (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2009). The interview process benefitted from a sense of rapport and mutual understanding between the participants and the interviewer, a racialised academic. Nevertheless, we remained vigilant about our possible preconceptions, particularly against the risk of interpreting the data as influenced by our own experiences of exclusion. Additionally, as an all-male research team, we continually questioned our own awareness and views regarding the gender dimension of our research.

The data collection process hinged on a combination of purposive sampling and snowball sampling, non-probability sampling methods that prioritise securing deep understanding over achieving representativeness. Purposive sampling is particularly apt for explorations of social phenomena in fine detail by recruiting participants with specific qualities that confer a tight relevance to the research questions at hand (Patton, 2002). Snowball sampling, which involves tapping into initial participants’ social and work contacts to access further participants, is also a well-recognised approach for supporting participant recruitment in qualitative research (Browne, 2005). In this research, while slow and time-consuming, the sampling strategy, which utilised author networks and referral chains, yielded an eventual sample composed of informationally rich participants (Bryman and Bell, 2007). Empirical saturation shaped the sample size (Guest et al., 2006; Morse, 1994). By the 20th interview, saturation set in substantially, and by the 22nd interview, no significant new insights emerged.

The interviews had an in-depth, semi-structured mode, which afforded participants influence over the question flow and content, prioritising their voices and perspectives. Open-ended questions corresponded broadly to our multi-level analysis (i.e. individual, organisation and society levels), as informed by Cortina’s (2008) theorisation. Specifically, the questions explored participants’ sense of how racially motivated selective incivility linked to issues of discrimination propagated by particular individuals such as colleagues, supervisors and clients/customers; organisational realities and processes that contribute to selective incivility; and wider societal forces that shape selective incivility organisationally and individually. Our interview process utilised the popular UK-based umbrella term BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) that refers to all ethnic groups except for those socially constructed as white. However, we decided to adopt the phrase ‘racialised professionals’ eventually, as we recognised in our later discussions and reflections that our participants’ comfort and identification with the term BAME varied considerably. Guided by interpretivist ontology, we privileged participants’ views of the social world and the meanings they attached to systems, policies and practices that they encountered as carrying significant weight. In particular, the interviewing approach prioritised understanding the participants’ perceptions of selective incivility through the tracing of their lived experiences (Sandberg, 2005), as subtle racism may not be objectively identifiable outside the targets’ experiential knowledge.

We opted for thematic analysis to dissect our data (Boyatzis, 1998). The analysis process began by each author independently carrying out active and repeated readings of the interview texts to immerse deeply into the data. During the active reading phase, we referred to the literature frequently in order to ensure we accounted for all dimensions of interest (Tuckett, 2005), but we also remained open to previously unreported, newly discoverable phenomena. Our initial code generation exercise focused on all data segments that seemed key to racialised professionals’ selective incivility experiences (Braun and Clarke, 2006). After the coding and collating of the data, we grouped together the long list of initial codes, and translated them into themes. While each author independently coded the data, frequent team meetings helped clarify a convergent approach to coding and interpretation to ensure consistency and precision. During the team meetings, we also checked the themes for coherence vis-a-vis the patterns we detected, the relative separateness of each theme’s content and the degree of match between the themes and data extracts (Patton, 2002). Where codes overlapped, we turned them into a common code, and we dropped some codes, as they did not correspond to any of the themes. The final step involved defining and labelling themes by clarifying what each theme denoted, how the themes interrelated and what particular dimensions of the data the themes encapsulated (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Table 2 depicts the data structure of our research.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 2.

Data structure of racialised professionals’ experiences of selective incivility.

Overarching themes	Emergent themes	Exemplar quotes
Experiences of selective incivility enabled by individual-level effects	Theme 1: Ascriptions of excess and deficit to racialised professionals	My previous manager used to make unkind jokes about me being useless and thick . . . It got so bad part of me felt that I didn’t deserve my job, I got convinced it was beyond my abilities. (P4, Black African woman, tourism)
	Theme 2: White employees as honest liars vs. strategic coverers	Just because you think you aren’t racist doesn’t mean that you’re actually not racist. Passive-aggressive, racially charged vibes crop up even with people who think they’re all au fait with equality. (P10, Black Caribbean woman, logistics) He used his power, actually he abused his power to put me down every chance he got. But would he say he’s out to get me because he dislikes me for not being white? No, he isn’t ever going to say that. (P15, Middle Eastern man, tourism)
	Theme 3: White employees’ defensiveness	If I confront someone about their racism, they could literally refuse to work with me . . . it’s the one thing you can’t say. (P6, South Asian woman, marketing)
Experiences of selective incivility enabled by organisation-level effects	Theme 4: Organisational whitewashing	Nobody accepts that racist behaviours are commonplace. The default is to shut it down, make the complaints go away, so we don’t look bad as a collective. (P12, Black African woman, consulting)
	Theme 5: Management denial	I used to believe that some behaviours are considered so offensive that if anyone was foolish enough to try that stuff with me, the managers would come down on them like a ton of bricks . . . Unfortunately, with my first job, I learned the hard way that that doesn’t always happen . . . you feel so frustrated that walking away, you know, leaving the job is the only option left. (P14, South Asian man, finance)
	Theme 6: Upstream exclusion	We are fair game, because none of us are in charge . . . it’s extremely rare to see brown faces above middle management. (P17, South Asian woman, healthcare)
Experiences of selective incivility enabled by society-level effects	Theme 7: Growing societal intolerance	My boss made a couple of flippant comments [about Windrush] . . . that hit a raw spot, given who I am and my background, I was gobsmacked . . . With national scandals like Windrush and others, racism is playing such a big part in the nation’s life, and that definitely has a toxic effect in terms of seeing more questionable behaviours towards black employees. (P2, Black Caribbean man, finance)
Experiences of selective incivility enabled by interaction effects across multiple levels	Theme 8: Intersectional (dis-)advantages	As a black woman with darker skin, my experience is almost non-stop hostility . . . This is just an observation, but it’s not the same for lighter-skinned black women. (P8, Black Caribbean woman, law) On a good day, if I can pull off a less foreign-sounding accent, that’s one less reason for them to be rude and dismissive . . . I gain extra 20 points on the IQ scale. (P9, Black African man, logistics)

Racialised professionals’ experiences of selective incivility

Discussion

Our research expands the conceptual scope of Cortina’s (2008) selective incivility, while also confirming key elements of the framework. Our findings regarding frequent ascriptions of excess and deficit to racialised professionals reflect the powerful grip of negative social categorisations that shape white employees’ perceptions of difference. As we explain, while selective incivility appears as merely momentary expressions of denigration, it also has cumulative consequences on working lives and careers, because it has the long-term effect of casting racialised professionals as interlopers in organisations. Additionally, honest liars versus strategic coverers exemplify how outgroup aversion and differential esteem, either consciously or unconsciously deployed, tend to be widely expressed in organisations. The ubiquity of honest liars and strategic coverers are important in understanding the continuity of selective incivility, despite the increasing social rejection of racism in rhetorically inclusive organisations. Introducing white defensiveness (see also DiAngelo, 2018), we extended Cortina’s framework at the individual level by accounting for the affective responses of white people to claims of selective incivility. White defensiveness explains why calling out racism can ironically seem more offensive than subtly racist behaviours, and thus it points to an important mechanism unaccounted for by the selective incivility framework. The silencing effects of white defensiveness, as revealed by this study, form a critical aspect of how selective incivility operates at the individual level.

At the organisation level, our research shows that organisational whitewashing and management denial within a context of upstream exclusion of racialised professionals render organisational policy, norms and leadership practices advantageous to white employees, providing fertile ground for selective incivility. While our findings map onto organisation-level concerns in Cortina’s (2008) framework with some degree of fit, they signify the need to account for the centrality of organisational power hierarchies, which ensures selective incivility is easy to deploy and resistant to change. It is possible to deny subtle racism or whitewash it because power holders are white, and they have the capacity to define reality in accordance with their interests. By contrast, most racialised professionals wield significantly less power and influence in organisations, which reduces their ability to make legitimate claims about selective incivility that would ensure perpetrators are deterred. Interestingly, at the society level, Cortina (2008) recognises the importance of existing power asymmetries across groups to the operation of selective incivility at work. Yet, our study shows that power differentials generate workplace pecking orders, which enable selective incivility. Thus, power realities should be key to the organisation level of analysis also in selective incivility.

As we demonstrate, at the level of society, dynamic macro-level changes in equality norms and practices are endogenous to organisational policies and employee actions (e.g. Tatli et al., 2017). In our research, the worsening social exclusion in the national context further fuelled selective incivility in the workplace, underlining a strong relationship between community diversity climate and organisational race relations (see also Ragins et al., 2012). Building dynamism into the society-level effects in Cortina’s (2008) framework, we demonstrate how selective incivility has time and place dimensions. Society-level effects are long-lived factors, but they do not statically shape how selective incivility operates, because they are subject to significant historical forces that can become highly salient within specific periods (e.g. the current anti-immigrant culture in the UK). Thus, we show that the nature and implications of selective incivility emerge within particular contexts, and contextual sensitivity must guide the theory’s empirical application.

A further theoretical contribution of our article is to trace the interplay of all three levels of analysis that constitute selective incivility through our intersectional approach. Although the levels of analysis in selective incivility are analytically separable, they are not mutually exclusive. All levels bleed into each other in some respects, and a strong interplay transpires across the three levels of analysis. While the notion of selective incivility recognises that different levels interact, it does not specify the crucially important interaction effects that emerge at the interface of individual, organisation and society levels. One useful step in this direction was Cortina et al.’s (2013) incorporation of intersectionality of race and gender into selective incivility, but their operationalisation of intersectionality mainly resided at the individual level. As we argue, intersectional theorising aims to capture the interplay of different levels of analysis in shaping the social experiences of individuals who carry multiple identities simultaneously. Additionally, Cortina et al. (2013) emphasise how selective incivility intensifies for workers with two stigmatised identity categories (i.e. double jeopardy). However, we argue, the intersections of identities people hold based on their structural locations can confer upon them both advantages and disadvantages in a complex and counterintuitive manner. In our research, intersectional (dis-)advantages carry nuances in relation to gender and race owing to additional dimensions, such as accentism and national origin, colourism, occupational/industry affiliation and so on. We also reveal that intersectional (dis-)advantages accrue through the interplay of surface-level characteristics (i.e. gender and race) and deep-level characteristics (i.e. capacity for self-monitoring/conformity; individualistic vs. solidaristic outlook). Thus, our study highlights the multidimensionality of racialised professionals’ selective incivility experiences, superseding double jeopardy to emphasise within-group variety and complexity.

Conclusion

This research has highlighted the multi-level nature of subtle racism by utilising the theoretical lens of selective incivility. We are mindful that the results apply to a particular group, racialised professionals, who may face different work realities as compared with lower-income racialised workers with insecure employment contracts. Future studies focused on the intersection of class and race hierarchies may reveal additional complexities in multi-level workings of selective incivility. Indeed, utilising selective incivility in relation to other less well-studied bases of inequality, such as age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion and so on in a wider range of contexts, including non-western settings, can reveal further the nuances of subtle discrimination that pervade work organisations today. Additionally, future research could deploy selective incivility to scrutinise hierarchies within the category of whiteness as well, expanding the topical reach of the concept into a wider array of social groups, which equality scholarship tends to miss as possible targets of racism (e.g. Eastern European workers in the UK). Moreover, a critical next step to broaden insights from selective incivility research to date is to undertake qualitative research that encompasses both majority and minority groups, exploring the full range of ambiguities and ambivalences that help reproduce conditions for selective incivility.

Selective incivility has enormous emotional, psychic and materials costs for racialised professionals, but it likely entails significant indirect costs for organisations as well, through declining motivation and increased turnover intentions, as our research signals. Quantitative research can help measure such indirect costs, providing further evidence of the full extent and kinds of harm selective incivility generates for not only racialised workers but also their organisations. The concept of selective incivility is extraordinarily powerful, and we strongly advocate its wider and diverse use in equalities research. Not only can selective incivility offer a more refined view of how new modes of discrimination are shaping human relations in the context of work, but also it can provide fresh and novel insights to tackle subtle racism, one of the most fundamental problems in organisations today.

As we conclude our article, the heinous racism that led to George Floyd’s death in the USA and the disproportionate impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on racialised communities (often identified as BAME in UK terminology) weigh heavily on our minds. These realities are painful reminders of how organisations and societies have spectacularly failed to live up to the principle of equality for all. As organisations may experience contractions in business activity as a result of the pandemic, it is especially important to remain vigilant that racialised workers do not experience the brunt of the fallout (e.g. redundancies, promotion or salary freezes, reduction in hours, etc.). Despite the numerous organisational problems our research lays bare in the context of subtle racism, we remain optimistic that transformative change is possible. A powerful ray of hope at this time of great upheaval has been the emergence of a new alliance politics between young people from divergent backgrounds as they protest in favour of race equality in the main streets of world cities. It is our hope that the growing public awareness of racism’s unacceptable toll will help inspire a renewed solidarity to push race equality into the epicentre of organisational life.